Laws requiring all impaired-driving offenders to install alcohol interlocks reduce the number of impaired drivers in fatal crashes by 16%, a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has found. If all states without such laws adopted them, more than 500 additional lives could be saved each year, according to the IIHS.
Alcohol interlocks are in-vehicle breath-testing units that require a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) below a certain level, typically somewhere between 0.02% and 0.04%, before the vehicle can be started.
|Prevalence of impaired driving
More than a quarter of U.S. crash deaths occur in crashes in which at least one driver has a BAC of 0.08% or higher. The prevalence of impaired driving in fatal crashes has changed little in the past two decades, and interlock laws are one of the few recent policy innovations that have made a difference, the IIHS said.
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Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].
